


The Road From the Gates

by Minutia_R



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Loyalty, Missing Scene, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 15:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7110592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was hard to believe that Kamet had once pitied the queen of Attolia, or seen in her a kindred spirit, someone whose choices were being whittled away one by one.  She didn’t wait to be given choices.  She wrested them from fate and the gods with her own two hands.  And in doing so, she had--quite inadvertently, Kamet was sure--given him one as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road From the Gates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drashizu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drashizu/gifts).



_I could run away and make myself a free man._

Kamet had said that the winter before the one just past, and Nahuseresh had smiled, answering a joke with a joke: _Oh, I’d find you._

It was a joke, but it was also true, and not only because Kamet would be conspicuous anywhere in Attolia. Nahuseresh was a careful man, not the sort to simply let a valuable possession slip through his fingers. And he did value Kamet. Of all his household, Kamet was the one Nahuseresh had brought with him to Attolia. He relied on Kamet’s intelligence, discretion, and loyalty.

But that was a year and a half ago, when Nahuseresh had stood high in Attolia’s court, and recalling and punishing an errant slave would have been a trivial way for her to show him her favor. Now Nahuseresh was a disgraced enemy and a prisoner. And nobody had bothered to lock up Kamet. In all the excitement, everyone had simply forgotten about him. If he slipped away now, if he disappeared into Attolia’s backwaters and set himself up as … an itinerant letter-writer, or something, he’d never be missed.

Kamet had cautioned Nahuseresh against underestimating the queen of Attolia, but he’d done it himself all the same. It was hard to believe he’d once pitied her, or seen in her a kindred spirit, someone whose choices were being whittled away one by one. Attolia didn’t wait to be given choices. She wrested them from fate and the gods with her own two hands. And in doing so, she had--quite inadvertently, Kamet was sure--given him one as well.

Kamet had never been so ungrateful to a benefactor in all his life. The fact was, he wasn’t used to having choices.

It was a weakness in him, surely, to wish that he’d been in Nahuseresh’s rooms when the queen’s guard had brought him back to the fortress as a prisoner. He was locked up in those rooms now, presumably because the dungeons were already full of Eddisians, and if Kamet had been there, he would be locked up too. Simple. No choices. And if some small traitorous part of his heart rejoiced at Attolia’s success, at her cleverness and daring, what would it matter?

Now it mattered. And the road to freedom led through the gates of Ephrata, where the bodies of three of Attolia’s barons were hanging. Nahuseresh had had them killed because he couldn’t buy their loyalty; it would only be fitting if his body replaced theirs.

She wouldn’t do it, Kamet told himself. She needed Mede gold, one way or another, and the emperor would pay a generous ransom for his nephew. Besides, Nahuseresh was an ambassador, his person inviolate.

But Kamet remembered the soft, smitten glances she’d given Nahuseresh only the day before, the way she’d snuggled into his side when he gave him her arm, and called him her savior--and then what she’d done this morning. And he couldn’t make himself believe that there was anything she wouldn’t do.

It wasn’t that Nahuseresh didn’t, honestly, have it coming. It was only that Kamet couldn’t walk away and let it happen.

He scanned the corridors outside Nahuseresh’s rooms, but all the guards were busy elsewhere. Oh, well. Kamet probably wouldn’t have liked it as an itinerant letter-writer anyway.

The guest suites at Ephrata were never meant to hold prisoners; Kamet didn’t have to be the Thief of Eddis to get the door open. And when Nahuseresh saw him--

It was the look of someone who found a possession he’d given up for lost, that was all.

“I thought you’d been killed,” said Nahuseresh pleasantly. “If they’d harmed you I would have killed her. Of course, I will anyway. And _him_.”

Him--the Thief of Eddis. Of course, Nahuseresh had already found a man to blame for the day’s events. He could no more believe that his downfall had been worked by a woman than he could have believed a slave of his to be truly disloyal.

Kamet began to pack up the documents from his writing desk, but Nahuseresh stopped him with an impatient gesture. “Leave them, there’s no time. And we’re going to have to swim for it--we can hardly do it with all that.”

“But surely you don’t want the queen to get her hands on all this,” said Kamet. The information in Nahuseresh’s personal papers would be worth more than his weight in gold, or the satisfaction of seeing him hanging from her fortress walls.

“True.” Nahuseresh hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Burn it. That will give them something to think about other than a couple of escaped prisoners.”

_One escaped prisoner_ , Kamet thought. But he didn’t say it. He had made his choice, and part of that choice was silence.

“Have you got your tinderbox?” said Nahuseresh. “They took mine.”

Kamet had. He struck a spark, and watched the last two years of his life go up in flames.


End file.
